Candela Giarda was 10 years old when a simple headache turned into a nightmare.
Within a week, the girl from Paraná fell into a coma and was put on a ventilator, hospitalized at the Favaloro Foundation in Buenos Aires. The doctors had nothing more to offer: they told her mother, Roxana Sosa, to wait for her to die. Roxana refused to accept that sentence. Alongside Father José Dabusti, she began praying to a Pope whom almost no one remembered: John Paul I, who reigned for just 33 days before dying in 1978.
Less than 24 hours later, Candela began to improve with no medical explanation whatsoever. The case was reviewed by commissions of doctors and theologians in Rome and culminated in a papal decree. Today she is 21 years old, takes no medication, remembers nothing about what happened, and sells honey from her own business. Thanks to her recovery, John Paul I was beatified on September 4, 2022, in St. Peter’s Square.
